


Inevitability

by 35-leukothea (35_leukothea)



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Angst, Cancer Arc, Episode: s04e14 Memento Mori, F/M, sorry lol
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-17
Updated: 2016-07-17
Packaged: 2018-07-24 13:37:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 365
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7510443
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/35_leukothea/pseuds/35-leukothea
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The inevitability of it all is not what scares him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Inevitability

**Author's Note:**

> this was inspired by a sketch I saw on tumblr! [here](http://marisketch.tumblr.com/post/147368454904/im-working-on-this-now-because-memento-moris) is the beautiful original post, and [here](http://35-leukothea.tumblr.com/post/147541104967/marisketch-im-working-on-this-now-because) is my reblog + addition.

To an outside eye, there are a thousand and one things in between them. Intimacy forged with pain; silent exchanges of all future hellos and goodbyes; a difference in height that makes everything about this morbidly comical. But Mulder has stopped thinking about the outside eye long, long since. All that’s important to him stands in his embrace now, holding herself together so tightly he can feel the stress wither away at her muscles.

She has been scaring him recently—or, rather, they scare each other. That isn’t entirely new, but it’s not exactly familiar, either. Mulder is more used to being scared of the _idea_  of Scully rather than the woman herself. Even from the first day, somewhere in the back of his mind he’s been scared of all the things he knows she has the will and the capability to do, given the right circumstances. She runs on potential energy, and it’s being slowly, surely sapped from her the longer she stays in this place.

So maybe that part of her doesn’t strike him the same way it used to. But what she’s lost in spirit, she’s gained in...something else. She commandeers attention like never before, as if physically wasting away grants her absolute priority even when the atrophy is hidden beneath layers of fabric and steely determination. Her cancer is a presence in every room, and even if people don’t know it, they adapt to it. Mulder watches it happen every single day. It scares him.

He can’t tell if Scully knows all this, or if she’s so distracted by what’s in her head that she’s forgotten how to get into his. But they’re past the event horizon, past the point where it matters. To an outside eye, what matters is that she’s dying. To Mulder, who is full of fear, what matters now is love.

Her skin is dry beneath his lips, and he does not wonder what her mouth might feel like in a time without cancer. He tries to fit everything he wants her to know into these tiny gestures, but all that really is is one thing. Not fear, not worry; maybe not even hope. Just love.


End file.
